I nudged a loose plug last night and killed the power to a couple machines.
It wasn't a clean power off but an on/off/on/off sort of event.
One of those machines was the Cube.
Now the all chips are
o-faced at HIGH clock.

Cube has been chugging along for 11 hours.
Not the solution I was hoping for but for now it is better than x'd chips...at least until the next shutdown/restart.